Flickr Off

There was a time in my internet life that I used Flickr on a daily basis. The professionally focused photo sharing site was a great way to post my favourite pictures of life, activities and lots and lots of action figures. I enjoyed being part of a social group that shared in each other’s achievements and were really supportive as ew each developed our photography skills.

But times changed, and suddenly we all had cameras in our phones and the idea of posting to Flickr lost it’s lustre. Where I used to go away for the weekend and come home with a few dozen photos to sort, now I had hundreds to scroll through, the vast majority of which were slight variations on the ones either side as I snapped off a bunch back to back.

I also became a dad, and kids take up a lot of time. 

It became so much easier to just post instantly to Twitter or Whatsapp to family members. Going then and posting to Flickr seemed like such an additional chore, and I quickly let it slip away. I’m fairly certain that I paid for a year or two or Pro membership in the last few years that I hardly ever used. 

So it has been that my once beloved Flickr account has sat idle, the last upload being from December 2015. It still contains hundreds of photos that I have no other easy to access backup of, and quite possibly, no backup, end of story. It has photos of family, friends, toys, personal projects, favourite foods, and filled with countless treasured memories. 

Flickr, once an independent site, was a bought by Yahoo a number of years ago, but recently was sold again. The new company have made some... changes. Lots of the changes are great. New upload features, new streamlined login, a renewed focus on professional photography. But the biggest change is to the storage service.

Up until now Flickr has had unlimited upload. I have well over the new 1,000 photos limit on my account. As of early January that simply meant I couldn’t upload anything new unless I deleted down to less than 1,000 myself, or paid for a Pro membership. Not really an issue given that, as I’ve mentioned earlier, I’ve stopped using Flickr, apart from occasionally returning to relive or reshape memories.

But, on February 5th, things change. As of that date, if you have more than 1,000 photos on you account and have not updated to Pro, everything older than your most recent 1,000 pictures will be deleted. Gone. Forever. No backsies.

And thus my time on Flickr has come to an end. Rather than simply lose everything, I archived and downloaded everything, including the titles and associated data. This was, thankfully, made painless through a feature on the site itself.

They’re now all safely on my hard drive, and right now, I’m uploading all those, literally thousands of photos, to my online Google Photos. I’ll be looking forward to going through all of them soon and sorting them into folders, and maybe sharing some wonderful memories on my Twitter. Some are hilariously low resolution compared to what I can take with even my old photo today. It really is a nostalgia trip.

I’ll be leaving Flickr as is for a while, but intend to delete the everything off that too eventually.

Finally, I want to close out but saying that, while the new Flickr isn’t for me, I’m excited to see what comes of it in the future. I hope this all leads to a rebirth of sorts and they find a way to make the site relevant again. I had a good time with the site once.

But, goodbye for now, Flickr. 

Gone Mobile

Traditionally, my blogging and Flickr posting has been done through a desktop or laptop. But with more and more of my online activity done on my iPad, and on the go, I've been moving toward mobile blogging and photo posting.

Unfortunately, both Blogger and Flickr are utterly unusable on a touchscreen for posting, and the new Flickr is just plain unusable on anything. So I had to go searching, and I found the perfect apps for each.

Blogsy

I looked around and this is easily the stand out option for psoting to blogs. It supports a wide range of the most popular blogs, including Google's Blogger platform, which I use. I can write new posts, edit old posts, add tags and drop in images and videos exactly like I want to. There's even a series of support videos linked within the app to help get you over that initial confusing transition period while you learn where everything is.

One of my favourite things about Blogsy is how easy it is to add links and images, alter paragraph formats and font sizes or colours, all without altering the standard paragraph style of my blog. That's something Blogger couldn't even manage when I was posting to it directly!

Rating: Highly recommended. Get blogging!

FlickStackr

There was a little competition for my attention when it came to Flickr apps. I needed something that could not only allow me to post, tag and edit descriptions, but also perform batch edits and create new sets, or edit old sets. After reading around a little, I settled on FlickStackr, and I couldn't be happier. It's wonderfully designed, and allows me to do everything I need and more. It's become the only way I ever log in to Flickr any more as the site itself is unusable on my iPad in Chrome.

I love how this app displays my photos, and it includes a basic photo editting suite for minor alterations before, or even after, uploading. I can add single images or whole batches to set or groups, and can add tags to a bunch at once if I need to.

Rating: Picture perfect.

 

Things To Be Thankful For

On this cold winter night in East Cork, there is really only one thing I need be thankful for.



Friends. Without them, nothing else really matters.

I kind of wanted to leave that post there. End it with that one line. But I can't.

In two short months, Claire and I fly out to the unknown land of Canada.The undiscovered country of the future is one populated with no small amount of apprehension and fear, but also a lot of anticipation and excitement. Before us lies unlimited potential. But behind us lies all the friends we have in Ireland.

My friends have always been important to me. As a Gemini, I'm supposed to be my own best friend, capable of entertaining myself when alone. And my hyperactive imagination and ability to MacGyver toys out of any old rubbish means that generally I can. But I don't like to. I prefer to be around other people. I love being in the company of my friends. As much as I enjoy my job, my favourite day of the week is Sunday, when I get to hang out with everyone for a few hours.

Leaving them all behind is going to hurt. A lot. I know I'm going to miss my mom. I know I'll be homesick as soon as we touchdown in Vancouver, if not as soon as we lift off from Dublin! I know the thought of being so far away will be both thrilling and terrifying. But I know more than that that I will be sick with grief over leaving my friends. No Sunday breakfast, no Rock Band 3 parties, no boardgame afternoons.

And so, I cease waffling on and give thanks to you, the people who put up with me. You've made my 12 years in Cork a wonderful chapter of my life that I will never forget. You've been part of my life for almost half of my time on this earth.

Thanks.

Good Times

While looking through some of the photos I have tagged as "Favourite" on Flickr, I found these, in no particular order.None of these were taken by me, but all of them bring back some great memories. All images link to their original location, so click through to read about them.

In case people haven't seen them, there is a full set of Spider-Man's adventures around Cork, posted by Peter Parker himself, on Flickr. Seems he had a lot of fun while Claire and myself were away in the U.S. last summer. Just follow the link!

Photos, Fotos, Phfotoz

During my controversial exile from the land of crystal clear data streams and radiating rays of information, I did have a chance to start organising, tagging and writing little paragraphs for more photos from the Epic Holiday(TM) of 2008. My Flickr stream now has an amazing nine pages of new photos, from the baseball games we saw to walking around San Diego, driving a Corvette to Vegas and back, and Star Trek.

I have tonnes more to post, and hope to make a further dent in my backlog soon. As well as older photos, I really want to start posting some newer stuff as well, including a photo tour of our new place.

Soon, soon, soon!

What Is Worse Than One Of Me?

Six of me! In one room!! Crazy!


Lots of Photoshopping here, obviously! Not very well done, just took lots of photos of me in various places around the room using the tripod, then used the lasso tool to carefully cut each of the clones out and paste them into a single image. It shouldn't be hard to work out which clone belongs to the full background. Things look great until you blow it up and start looking closer. But I'm just nit-picking! For a first attempt, self taught, with no masking or other neat PS trickery, it's not bad at all!

Mike Wieringo

Back in October 2002 Marvel attempted to put a fresh look on their First Family. Although that first issue didn't actually have "The World's Greatest Comic Magazine" that above the name, it didn't take long for Fantastic Four to rightfully regain that title under the care and direction of new creative team, Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo.

This is it. This is the issue that started it all for me. Not only did it ignite my love for Fantastic Four, but it rekindled my love of comics in general.

Around this time I was getting bored of comics. We still had no comic stores in Cork, and I was in Dublin for a few days when this came out. I have to be honest, I didn't even buy this issue. As you can see from the cover, it was selling for just 9cent in the US. Instead, Forbidden Planet must have gotten in hundreds! When I bought my graphic novels, random singles and a t-shirt or two the guy behind the desk threw in this for free.

"You'll like it", he said. "It's a new creative team. Pretty good stuff". I looked at the cover and agreed that the art was nice anyway, but it was Fantastic Four, a comic series that was anything but fantastic. I had little or no interest in reading cheesy adventures of aliens and mole-people. In my bag was the first 12 issues of something called Ultimate X-Men in a single hardbacked book that looked far more exciting! But what the heck, it was free! I thanked the guy behind the desk and walked out.

Today I cherish this issue. It's far from mint condition having been read by all my friends that weekend, and many, many times since then. It is well read, and well worn, like a good comic should be.

Ultimate X-Men sits on my shelf, unopened in months, if not years. I stopped collecting the hardbacks once I realised I couldn't remember what happened from one issue to the next.

Anyway, back to Fantastic Four, and the Waid/Wieringo run. Time moved on and I couldn't collect the issues that followed. But in the meantime, a new comic store opened in Cork, and I had everything at my fingertips. I was reading all sorts of comics, but the darker tone set by movies like X-Men and the then rumoured new Batman was sapping my interest in a lot of the Big Twos work. Admittedly, I was never a fan of DC, but even Marvel was loosing money to smaller publishers like Devils Due Publishing (DDP). G.I. Joe was bright, flashy action, full of silly costumes, code-names and ninjas. This was a song to my heart in an era where the X-Men wore black leather and Wolverine was more-often referred to as Logan than his code-name.

But the cover to the first issue of Mike Wieringo and Mark Waids Unthinkable story arc in Fantastic Four 496 grabbed my attention. It was bright and flashy. And it had Doom! And Doom is always fun. Plus, I remembered the issue I had from a few months previously. The art was great. The writing was fun and easy to follow, without being simplistic. So I added Fantastic Four to my pull-list, an act I thought I would soon regret.

At the time I couldn't name a single artist or writer working in comics. I was relatively fresh on the comics scene, especially up-to-date US stuff. Essential X-Men and Spectacular Spider-Man, the European reprints of US comics, were up to four years behind their US counterparts. Besides, with them, I didn't have to work about creator names. It wasn't like I had a choice in what I read. But now I could choose, and these Mark and Mike fellows made an incredible team!

Marks dialogue was sharp and witty, but it was Mikes art that nailed it! I fell in love with this art style as soon as I read this issue. It was bright, colourful and cheery, it had chunky fingers, cartoonish faces and minimalistic line usage. As Victor wandered around the small village, I almost expected the sun in the background to have a big-eyed, smiley face! And that big reveal on the last page! Wow! I was blown away! Maintaining the style I loved, but filling it with a foreboding menace and threat greater than the Fantastic Four had ever faced before!?! How did this man, this god among mortals, manage such a feat?!? I had liked the art direction of the Onslaught Saga, Joe Madureiras style, and Mikes art was sufficiently similar to catch my attention, but distinctive enough that I could compare both and agree that this was my style of choice.

And with every passing issue the Unthinkable arc just kept getting better and better, living up to its name in every way possible. The villain separated the family, attacked the children, sacrificed all to win. The story moved in unthinkable directions, as Mr. Fantastic took up weapons to even the odds. And with every twist of the writing, the art maintained the pace, panel after glorious panel of stunning visuals. For the first time in years (decades?!?) Marvels First Family were right back in center stage, and the buzz across the internet was electric.

Of course, I need not mention that Mikes depiction of Sue Richards as adventurer, hero, wife and super-hot soccer-mom has yet to be beaten in comics. She was beautiful without being sexual, strong without being butch and proved that you didn't need to have revealing cleavage and big bosoms to keep every readers eyes glued to the panels.

I bought every issue of the Waid/Wieringo run of Fantastic Four from the Unthinkable arc onwards, picking up the missing six earlier issues in trade paperback. I still have them all. I still pull them out occasionally to read myself, or when someone asks me to recommend something. I still count the first issue for that creative team as one of my all-time favourite comics, and the start of Unthinkable as a master-class in story-telling and deception in literature.

Mike and Mark thought me how to enjoy comics again. After their run on Fantastic Four finished, the comic was taken off my pull-list. I had no interest in seeing what others were going to do. I followed Mikes works closely with Marvel, and he's the reason I read comics I would never have thought to before.

On August 12th of this year I was at home in Tipperary, away from fast internet and the wider world. I was home for a holiday, but as it turned out, I ended up attending two funerals. One was for an elderly aunt of my mums and was a fairly nice affair. She had been sick and everyone was prepared. The other was for the father of a school-friend of mine who had walked out his front door a few days previously and dropped dead in a field. Minutes beforehand he had been in having tea with his wife and seemed fine and happy. The heart-attack had been massive and unexpected.

I was sitting at home, as I said, away from fast, easy access interent, watching TV and preparing to go visit the family house and give my condolences to the family. It was late morning or early afternoon. I got a text message from a friend. He knew I was at home and wanted to let me know what news was breaking the internet in half. He also knew I was a fan.

At just 44 years young, Mike Wieringo had passed away from a massive heart attack. My favourite artist. My idol. The man whose style I most enjoyed. Taken. Without warning, or reason. This hit me harder that either of the funerals I attended over those days. A man I'd never met, never spoken to. I'd never emailed him, though I read his blog regularly, and commented once or twice. I'd commented on his brothers blog as well, and all I could think of was him. As terrible as Mike's lose was, I couldn't help but imagine how Matt must feel to have lost his older brother, and than upset me more. It was obvious from both blogs that the two brother loved each other very much. This death was insane and meaningless.

So when I heard of the immediate outpouring of grief from artists and writers across the industry, my heart sang with just a little joy. I didn't know how to describe how I felt, but these writers could put into words how we all felt. The artists illustrated our shared grief with tribute art that seemed to come from each of our own souls. Mike had touched more peoples hearts than I had ever expected, both inside and outside the comics industry. And the tributes continued to pour in.

And then the art went up on ebay, with proceeds going towards the Hero Initiative. I had to have one! But, as I was broke, I figured I didn't have a chance. One piece was going fairly cheap. So I bid. If I couldn't win it, I could at least push up the final price a little!

The thing is, it seems someone was watching out for me. I won!

Drawn by Nate Lovett, it shows Koj from Tellos roaring in sorrow at the news of Mikes passing. Along with the original pencil art was a beautiful, high quality print. The bottom right hand corner has the artists signature, as well as the words We'll miss you Mike! No truer words have been written.

We'll miss you. But we'll never forget you.

Related Posts
A Story From Two Years Ago
Vancouver Fan Expo: Stuart Immonen

5 Questions, 1 Chance

Some of my contacts on Flickr have started doing this "5 Questions" thing on their photostreams, and I've joined in. It's certainly not a game invented in Flickr. Variations of it have existed in Live Journal, MySpace and, although I haven't seen it myself, I'd have to assume Bebo as well.

The premise is simple. You get to ask me up to 5 questions on anything you like, and I'll answer them honestly. One of the ideas of this is that it's supposed to be anonymous when I post the answers, so the questions are PMed to me over Flickr. Obviously I'll know who asked what, but I won't reveal the identity in the answers.

So go on. Get over to my Flickr page and PM me those questions. This is it, your only chance. Ask that burning question, or just find out about my thoughts on a subject are (like I don't voice them enough! It's by far my most annoying aspect)! But remember, PMs make them anonymous, but they also allow a level of screening on my part! You're not getting any blackmail worthy information out of me!

Of course, I also encourage those of you brave enough to try it out to join in! Sure, there's a slim risk involved, but if you promise to be honest, it can be incredibly refreshing. I'm looking forward to some of the questions thrown at me, though so far, the majority are toy related! Heh. They know me too well.

Edit: Wow! I just ran a spell-check. I spelled "anonymous" right first time! Go me! This is an achievement. My spelling can be awful.

Another Year Older And Deeper In Friends

Woo! Look at me! Still alive, still kicking it! Still buying toys, still reading comics, still writing this blog, still taking photos, still in college... crap. Well it was good while it lasted.

Last year I was kinda depressed as the clock ticked over midnight into my birthday, and this year, I was feeling similar. Don't know why. But I'm guessing it was to do with a lack of food or something. Anyway, I'm feeling great now as the day draws to a close!

I had another exam today. Child Health and Paediatrics. Went well, I felt. Over all, very happy with it. On the way there in the morning I took some really nice photos. It was a very bright morning. Then I got home with a chocolate cake and took the photo you see above, which was fun to do, and a bit different. On checking Flickr, I found my good friends that I've made there had posted lots of cool birthday photos for me, involving all sorts of toys! How cool is that?

So what's another year? Last year, I was really just getting into this. Over the past 265 days I have met a tonne of new people across the Internet that I will be forever proud to call friends. I still have the best friends in the world in real life, I'm still with the only person I want to spend my life with (no, not Spider-Man... Claire! Sheesh!), I've started some interesting projects and I'm almost finally done in UCC, even if I have some more time to spend in college. But at least I can get a job for a while and have money again!

Self Education: Photoshop

Yesterday I learned some more of the joys of Photoshop, and put together the image you see above. In doing so, I had the opportunity to learn a bunch of new skills, as well as take time out from my study, which is, I have to admit, beginning to melt my brain!

To be honest, this whole thing started as a neat, simple idea that quickly spiralled out of control. Originally it was just going to be Spidey sending his birthday wishes to a Flickr pal, but then I thought to add a party of friends. Then the idea of a handmade banner cropped up, and I played around with that for a bit.

Once I had a group set up and ready to shoot, I realised that Giant Sized Spidey didn't have a place to be, so I sketched out the basics of what I thought might work. He was then photographed separately against a green screen and removed from his own background to be placed in this image. This meant learning how to use masks, something I'd never tried before but was aware of.

Once Draft One was complete, I didn't like the text on the banner, so all of it was photoshopped out and brand new text was drawn into it on the computer! That had to be blurred, filtered, and have a little noise added to make it look smooth and part of the image as a whole. All new features to me again!

Draft Two complete, I realised Spidey now kinda just hung there, so I needed a frame. After going nuts trying to figure out how to just make a simple straight line and then put a curve in it, I almost gave up. Then I remembered about something called OOB (Out Of Bounds) a friend had used and looked that up, which taught me how to do the frame. A few minor adjustments and I was nearly there.

Thankfully I had learnt my lessons on layers from a previous project, so almost every element of the image was on separate layers, making it easy to have Spidey and the banner overlapping the frame!! But that brought up a new issue! You see, in the photo of Spidey I used, part of his left elbow was cut off. Originally I didn't mind it, as it was outside the viewing area of the image in early drafts, but now that I had added the frame, he needed to have a complete arm.

To solve this, I had to use another of the photos I had taken of Spidey against the green screen that did have the elbow but was an inferior picture. I cropped the needed part, dropped out the background using my newly acquired masking skills and grafted the missing piece onto the large image. Smudge tool and careful blurring made the area of surgery seamless! If I hadn't included this paragraph, I doubt any of you would notice the work unless you really went looking for it. It's a tiny thing, but possibly the one I'm most proud of for what I had to do and how it turned out.

A little cleaning up here and there and I was done! I'm really proud of this. Yes, I started it for my friends birthday, but I have to admit, I finished it for myself! The weird thing is, I've never met Fengschwing in real life! I only know him through Flickr. Ah, the joys of the internet!

Go check out the image in it's full, gloriously uncompressed resolution to criticise my work with confidence!

Frozen Moments

Not only does May 2nd mean the first anniversary of my blogging exploits, but it is also marks the end of the first year of my Flickr account! And what a year it's been! To celebrate, I did a cool Flickr photo mosaic using a selection of images from the newest to the first few put up!

I hope you enjoy.
1. Friends, 2. Looking The Worse For Wear, 3. Images in Flame, 4. Shane in Sombrero, 5. Spider-Man?!?, 6. Andrea & I, 7. Looming Over, 8. Too Much Blue, 9. Just The Two Of Us, 10. Look Out! Cat!, 11. Hopi, 12. All Business, 13. Watching, 14. Me, 15. Three Daves, 16. See That..., 17. Friends 2006, 18. Hi!, 19. Classic Pose, 20. Cotton Wool Landscape, 21. The Touristy Shot, 22. Squish, 23. Sandy Dune, 24. Claire and Panda, 25. Picnic In The Park, 26. Noel, 27. Mirror Image, 28. Bring It On, Little Man, 29. Buster And Me, 30. To the Left, 31. Finger Puppets on the Moon, 32. Blink And You'll Be Missed, 33. Resting On The Lawn, 34. Through The Looking Glass, 35. Under Attack, 36. Debating World Politics

52 Weeks One Hero

Hi there, folks! Your friendly neighbourhood web-blogger here, taking over from Denis for a post. It wasn't that hard either. He leaves his account logged in, fool. All I had to do was wait until he was out and nab the keyboard!

Anyway, in his last post he talked about this whole 52 Weeks thing he's doing. Well, that inspired me to do something similar, but I figured having me turn up in the same group might not be the best idea. People might get annoyed. So I thought to myself, there are tonnes of action figures of little old me in the world, as well as tonnes of figures of lesser heroes. Surely there is somewhere that hosts portraits of toys! And sure enough there is.

Plastic 52 is all about respecting the little guy. Or gal, or monster, or car, or robot, or carobot, but you get the picture. So I joined up Denis' Flickr account to that too (he leaves that logged in as well! Will he never learn?). I've posted my first image, which, in the hopes of calming Denis down when he finds out what I've done, has him in it too.

So if any of you loyal readers have cool toys you might like to share with the world, come join us! It's a new group, so everyone's really friendly with everyone right now, which is great.

Anyway. I'm off to read some more Ultimate me. Did you know I'm dating Kitty Pryde in that universe? Man. I wish I could date Kitty Pryde. I wish I could date.

See ya in the funny pages!

52 Weeks One Person

I don't think I've mentioned here already that I'm jealous of anyone that can take self portraits. I mean, just look at these from Bob, Cian, Karen and Sharon, all good friends, all flaunting their talent in my face! Curses! And you know what's sickening about most of these? They're untouched, presented as snapped. That's all natural awesomeness! Gah!!

Now admittedly, my dislike of my own self portraits is in part due to the fact that I'm not a big fan of looking at photos of myself, but it's also true that I don't feel that I have a great eye for photography. That said, self portraits can be amazing, and seeing a bunch together is always nice. The best, in my opinion, are the ones that just look natural. Not posed, not set up. Just grabbing a camera and snapping a great picture. I don't think I can do that.

With this in mind, I want to introduce you all to a Flickr Group called 52 Weeks. It's a group of users on Flickr that are taking one self-portrait a week and adding them to that group, or adding their favourite if they take more. There's another group that is trying to get daily self portraits, 365 in a year, but that's a bit much for me. 52 sounds far more reasonable.

As I said, I know some of my friends and readers do awesome self-portraits, so I thought people might like to contribute. I'm going to be trying it myself, starting today. One photo a week can't be that hard to do, can it?!? I mean, even if I don't like 99% of the images of myself I take, I've got seven whole days to find that 1%.

Anyway. Have a look at some of the contributions already and see what you think. Some are great, some are good, but they're all interesting.

Just A Comment

If I have you as a Flickr Contact, then you've probably noticed that I spent some time this morning commenting on photos I liked, as well as building up my Favourites section.

I just figure I need to start acknowledging things I like and giving credit where credit is due.

On that basis, I've started to make an effort to keep up with peoples blogs and Flickrs and add comments if I think of something.

Moo! Moo I Tell You!

Way back when I started this blog thing, I developed a nasty (some might say, "stalker-like") habit of copying Cian. He started a blog, I started a blog. He got a Flickr account, I got a Flickr account. Well, that's it really. But they happened close together...

Anyway, I realised about a week ago that I hadn't done anything to copy him recently, so I started thinking. Move to Dublin? Nah. Too many toys to move house now. Grow some facial hair? Tried it. Didn't work. I'll post the results soon enough. Work in the computer industry? Eh. No. Start taking lots of really cool, quality photos? That would require talent, time, effort and drive. I suffer from a chronic lack of all of these things.

What ever could I do?

And then I remembered Cian showing me these! Moo Cards. He had gotten a set and showed me them. They were really nice. Granted, he had great images to start with, but the cards were so cute, and I really wanted them. Plus, they accept PayPal, and I had some credit in my account, so it wasn't even going to cost me anything (hush, I'm trying to justify to myself buying these when I can't afford to eat! Be quiet)!

Anyway, long story short, with the blessing and help of Claire I picked ten images out of the 500 plus photos I have up on my Flickr account to turn into Moo cards and sent off the order through the wonder of digital transfer systems.

They arrived back today through the slightly less wonderful snail-mail postal services. They came out really cool, as you can see. I have more up on Flickr. If you would like me to send you one, send me a message, either through this blog, my Flickr account, or if you know my email address, use that!! I can't guarantee I'll get it to you immediately. I can't afford food, so stamps are kinda low on the priority scale right now!

Anyway. That's it for now. Later!

More Pictures, More Updates

I posted a bunch of new photos on Flickr today, but also played with some of the new additions to the site that they have introduced since last I tried tampering with my sets and layout.

New photos include food, friends and funny stuff. And I have two Collections now as well, Toys and BBQ, making use of the brand new feature.

Flickr continues to prove it's awesomeness, and I still love it. It's already been worth ever cent I spent on it, and I have another year to go before I have to renew it, so that's great!!

Post Of The Century

Wow! So here it is, my 100th post! That's quiet an achievement for me. I didn't think I'd get this far in less than a year. I started this blog way back in May 2006, explaining the title. Around the same time I got a Flickr account, and already have well over 500 pictures on it! Woo!

In my time here I've blogged about trailers, random stuff and all the things that interest me. I've written reviews on movies, talked about where I stand in Civil War and enlightened you all on the joys of rubbish TV movies. I've complained about WarCraft, and missed it. I could go on, but you get the picture. I've been busy.

It's been fun blogging. 80 posts in 2006, and 20 already in 2007! I would have written this sooner, but college kept getting in the way. Darn college stuff.

So, what do I want for the next 100 posts? More stories, more fiction, more reviews. More writing that challenges me to be better. And at least one post soon where I announce that I actually got a degree. Eventually.

But my 100th post should be special. It should have some announcement to make it memorable. It should be different:

I'm starting a web-comic, provisionally titled "Tomorrow, Maybe You'll Be Gone", the alternative title for my blog way back when. Images and early drafts should be up soon. Now that I've taken the time to announce it, there's no going back.

See you all in the funny pages!

Photography

While I was wandering to my morning lecture I spotted a wealth of opportunities to get some really nice photographs. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me. In future, I'm going to try to start carrying my digital camera where-ever I go, maybe just have it in my bag at all times. I'd like to get more into photography, and with Cian, Karen and Jonathon all thinking the same, it would be a good time to do so. We could compare and contrast, learning from each other.

I'm not going to buy the crazy expensive equipment the guys have. Their cameras could get me a lot of action figures!! Besides, I like my camera. It takes some great shots, and does what I want it to do.

I simply have to try harder. Put in an effort to see my surroundings. Stop photographing toys.

The Big 5-0-0!

No. Not 500 posts! That's crazy talk. Though this post is my 76th, so I am 3/4s of the way to my centennial post!

Nope, I now have over 500 photos in my Flickr page! Though a lot of those are of toys rather than friends, I think over half are in fact of real people. So I'm not too embarrassed! That said, however, the actually 500th photo was indeed of an action figure!

I'm a busy bee today

And now I have a Flickr account too!

I'm gonna have to pay for it. The free option just isn't enough, especially to get started. Oh well, have to borrow my Claires credit card again. She won't let me have one because she thinks... knows that I'll go nuts buying stuff on ebay! I always need more Spider-Man action figures!